unverified voracity
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people in charge of things are just in charge of them for no reason
cofopoff
jim harbaugh takes pictures of excel with his phone
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playoff expansion
juwan howard
willie tagart
1942 michigan state
rutgers
mark estapa
mike legg lacrosse wonderment
[Bryan Fuller]

Unverified Voracity Took A Picture Of Excel On His Phone Comment Count

Brian November 5th, 2019 at 1:24 PM

It's like Speed except I have to keep talking about Nico Collins. I mean:

So on 47 targets Collins has 22 catches and 7 DPIs for a total of 544 yards, 11.6 yards per target. And that's with two extremely tenuous OPIs wiping out 38 and 45 yard catches. If those hadn't gotten called you're looking at 13.3 YPT. Collins not getting a zillion targets remains the most frustrating WHY U NO of the Harbaugh era.

[After THE JUMP: Harbaugh's playoff, people are just in charge, Taggart]

Jim Harbaugh's playoff plan was done in Excel. This dude Harbaugh may have missed his calling as blogger. He's put together a wildly disruptive, completely impossible, pretty awesome playoff plan, and then took a picture of it with his phone to send to a reporter:

"I came up with my own structure," he said this past spring. "I can take a picture of it and send it to you."

He is one beard away from being the center of the blogger distribution.

Anyway, that plan:

  • 11(?!) teams, including the five P5 conference champions and the highest-ranked G5 team. Five at-large bids.
  • Conference champions are "determined within a 12-game regular season by conference record and tiebreakers, similar to how the NFL chooses its division winners."
  • Conference championship games are gone.
  • Byes for the top three teams—the article says the top two but that can't be correct.
  • Home games!

This still caps the number of games anyone might play at 15 unless one of the teams in the first round makes the final. The implication of the conference champion section appears more vast than it originally appears:

"To play each other, to have tiebreakers, within those 12 games, you should be able to determine who your conference champion is," he said. "If you don't have the conference championship games, then you can expand your playoff to at least eight."

I think Harbaugh's advocating for getting rid of nonconference schedules entirely? Or at least severely restricting them? I'd be fine with that, honestly, if Michigan's just going to cancel series after series. But since the reason they keep paying teams like UCLA seven figures to not play them is so they can have seven home games annually, I don't think giving that up is on the table. Does it make sense that Michigan's athletic department budget falls apart if they don't have whatever the net is from a body bag game? No. Here we are anyway.

Juwan Howard's infinite NBA adventure. Via Brendan Quinn:

The fact is, Juwan Howard was never a franchise player. He was not the star to construct a roster around. He was highly skilled, highly motivated, but marginally athletic (by NBA standards) and rarely dominant. As Lynam puts it: “Riley had the right sense for who he was. Juwan wasn’t a guy who was going to score 30, 35 points per game. He was really a foundational piece on which to build, to build a really successful franchise for the long-term.”

What Howard was, more than anything, was a professional.

Pro·fes·sion·al.

“You know, we all think that we change as we get older — but I’m not sure he has,” Chapman says. “He’s the same guy now when I met him at 20. I mean, I know experiences shaped him and stuff, but he was just a dude who was perfectly wired to be a basketball lifer. A lot of guys are in the league to make money. He was there to handle his business. He was a pro.”

If Howard doesn't succeed here it won't be because he didn't put in the work.

Deadspin is dead. Always a shame to see some private equity knuckleheads buy a publication and run it directly into the ground, especially since Deadspin was a model that worked. The site made a profit being itself, a Red Panda-level achievement in 2019. It is the height of stupidity to push a woman on a unicycle flipping bowls onto her head to do anything except remain precariously balanced while providing content.

It sucks because that model produced a lot of good things, and the Maven-ing of sportswriting will produce none.

A Mavened publication has certain qualities. First, the owners take whatever editorial line the publication was pushing and do the opposite. Sometimes, this is as simple as taking good journalism and making it bad.

During its death march, the Village Voice pruned its famous arts coverage by cutting critics like Robert Christgau. At Texas Monthly, a magazine with a history of ass-kicking journalism, a former editor was caught discussing publicity plans with the company run by a cover subject. During Forbes veteran Lewis D’Vorkin’s brief, bonkers run as L.A. Times editor, he proposed a homepage full of “GIFs, GIFs, all manner of media.” …

Whether non-sportswriting attracts readers, as former acting editor Barry Petchesky argued, is almost beside the point. Mavened publications want traffic but not thoughts. The “incredibly broad mandate” G/O Media’s owners claimed to have granted Deadspin’s staff is illusory. For them, the worst thing a website could generate is a mild headache—mild and major headaches being pretty much the point of journalism.

From content to #content. It's a zombie.

It doesn't have to be like this! Some tech bros put this in the most douchy possible terms but shit if you're ex-Deadspin staff the time to band together and start an Undeadspin is now. Then you get to own it—looks around—and no one can complain if your SEO strategy is "what is a hat" and your main draw is a post with a 5000-word table in the middle of it. It would be tragic to waste a good outpouring of anger at toolbags who buy things just to ruin them.

Brandon_ToysRUs_i

Exit Taggart. FSU fired Willie Taggart halfway through year two, which is a hell of a way to go out after you bailed on Oregon after one year to take your dream job. Taggart walked into an offensive line situation that was probably worse than the one Harbaugh walked into: Deondre Francois got blasted out of Jimbo Fisher's last season and FSU trundled to 7-5; they were 5-7 the next year. Turning on an FSU game either year made you want to call 911 whenever the QB dropped back to pass. That's hard to fix in a year and change.

Now FSU has to pay Taggart a whopping 18 million and go pay someone else. Which is naturally rumored to be Bob Stoops. A local television station says FSU is "nearing deal," even. I have a dollar that says this falls apart.

Michigan fans are wondering if Taggart might end up in Ann Arbor. I'd give that a low probability. Taggart probably still has enough juice to get a G5 head job after building USF from 2-10 to 10-2 in four years. He hasn't had enough time at either Oregon or FSU for too much of the shine to come off that rebuild.

Meanwhile, I feel dumb typing this but it kind of feels like Michigan's coaching staff might be stable this offseason?

  • Campanile, McDaniels, Nua, and Gattis are all in year one. They probably won't get bounced and probably won't get wooed elsewhere until they've proven a little bit more.
  • Brown, Warinner, Partridge, Jay Harbaugh, Moore, and Zordich are probably staying put unless they get a promotion elsewhere.

Even if they Michigan does lose someone only Harbaugh and Moore—the least likely to leave—open up a slot Taggart could fill. If Warinner leaves Michigan has to get another OL coach. Michigan has been un-inclined to do the Hoke shuffle when it comes to defensive openings—every defensive coach has a primarily defensive background, both as a player and a coach.

I wouldn't bet on Taggart in Ann Arbor for a lot of reasons.

Halftime, 1942. Things used to get a lot weirder against MSU:

It's Rutgers week at Banner Society dot com. Yes. It is. Don't tell me it's not. Look, here's a post about Rutgers:

In the name of equality, let’s put a little bit of Rutgers in every conference.

Rutgers won’t be forced to play 60+ games every year. All that practice might make Rutgers really good at football.

We’ll instead divvy Rutgers’ 12 games up among the Power 5. Each league gets to mix two Rutgers games into its regular schedule. That leaves two games for Rutgers to schedule as it sees fit.

Won’t that create lopsided schedules within each P5 conference? No. We can just cancel series we no longer need, such as Tennessee-Alabama.

That was definitely about Rutgers, wasn't it? I told you so.

It was fate. Michigan's most recent hockey commit is F Mark Estapa, who will be coming in… at some point. That commitment was over ND, which is a nice thing, and was ordained by hockey rules:

That guy's gotta go to Michigan.

Etc.: Chris Fetter is being courted by the Mets and Yankees to be their pitching coach. I'd brace for a departure. Glasgow is a Butkus semi-finalist. So is Joe Bachie! More on Collins from Orion Sang. Phillipe Lapointe profiled. Jeff Tambellini is his coach in the BCHL. Howard on DeJulius. More on Howard.

Comments

JeepinBen

November 5th, 2019 at 2:25 PM ^

I think they'd love to, but the problem is that they have expenses and need to make money. Even MGoBlog's origin story starts with Brian at a full time job and blogging on the side until this became big enough to support him, and now the entire staff. Sure, they can take out a domain and try to get ad revenue, but how long will that take to get them enough money for their rent, food, health insurance, etc?

Joined: 01/22/2010

MGoPoints: 32222

bronxblue

November 5th, 2019 at 3:51 PM ^

I guess they could hope for an HBO-Ringer type of situation, where a media property that wants some content but doesn't require it to be immediately super-profitable gives you free reign, but those are hard to come by.  

It's more likely the good writers there just go write elsewhere.  

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 170851

cornman

November 5th, 2019 at 3:13 PM ^

They won't because nobody likes them enough to follow them to a new blog.  You can't make money when nobody is reading your blog.

 

The more popular deadspin authors will get hired by other hit-piece factories like Vox, Slate, or Vice.  The others will fade into complete obscurity as they're forced to get regular-person jobs.  

Joined: 12/17/2018

MGoPoints: 639

Communist Football

November 6th, 2019 at 6:44 AM ^

I'm somewhat of an insider on this media stuff. I think the story is much more mixed than what is described by the Ringer writer. As a writer, you're not entitled to get paid to write whatever you want. In general, you're paid to write stuff that subscribers or advertisers want to read. Because those are the people who pay the bills who then pay you.

MGoBlog has obviously found a formula that works, by being the go-to site for hard-core Michigan fans, and low overhead. But the L.A. Times was the opposite situation: huge fixed costs in terms of a physical newspaper, bloated journalistic contracts, the collapse of traditional advertising revenue, and a declining circulation. LAT writers blanched at being asked to participate in a more rational model. Most every writer thinks his/her work is more important than it actually is, and deserving of support whether it has the audience to economically justify that or not.

Joined: 09/18/2010

MGoPoints: 18935

NCBlue22

November 5th, 2019 at 2:00 PM ^

Yes, that's correct.  The bottom 6 play in the first round.  After that it is re-seeded for the final 8.  

I think Harbaugh just meant 12 games = 9 conference + 3 non-conference as we have it.  I think that was over-analyzed here.

While we're making reasonable changes, I would propose moving everything up 1 week (I think feasible for students?) so that the first round is played after Thanksgiving...1 game Friday night, 1 Saturday afternoon, and 1 Saturday night.  The final 8 would then be played first weekend in December.  After that the same NY6/Bowl selection system we have now can go into motion.

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 967

LKLIII

November 5th, 2019 at 3:06 PM ^

I like the plan, but assuming conference championship games are eliminated, it's going to create problems for any conference bigger than 10 teams. Additionally, those problems grow as conferences now hit the 14 or 16 member mark.

  1. First problem: Any team that doesn't have the toughest 2-3 in-conference teams on their conference schedule that particular year would be at a huge comparative advantage & similarly, teams that get stuck with notably difficult schedules at a huge comparative disadvantage. 

    Yes, we already have this issue w/ the Divisional imbalances in the Big Ten.  However, at least the championship game in Indy forces the West team to prove their mettle against a guaranteed solid team, and any solid team that survives the East (albeit with an extra loss or two) has the ability to mitigate that by logging one more win.

    This issue would also disproportionately harm good teams with "protected" inter-conference rivalries with other good teams. For example, in an otherwise regular lock-step conference scheduling cycle, Michigan would see certain brutal years when the 3 teams they don't play are Rutgers, Maryland, and Illinois, but they'd also see a few cupcake years omitting Ohio State, Penn State, and maybe a very good Wisconsin/MSU/Iowa squad.  However, presuming Michigan kept a protected game against Ohio State and MSU that trumped the default lock-step conference scheduling cycle, Michigan's would-be "cupcake" segment of the cycle would literally never happen. Meanwhile, some other team would indirectly benefit because they'd play Michigan, Ohio State, and MSU less frequently as a result. 
     
  2. Second, how do you resolve situations where two conference teams have great records, but didn't play each other that particular season?  In the NFL, divisional teams play each other a few times per year. I suppose you could go to tie breaker rules like W/L records or fancystats, giving preference to the team that won the conference title least recently, etc.



In the end though, maybe all of this could be mitigated by two things:

A)   Maybe the conference schedule is on some sort of default rotation, but it's got a strength of schedule modifier applied to it. Each Spring, the conference could crunch the numbers from the prior season advanced statistics & season record, then designate each conference team as a "Category I; Category II, or Category III" team. Then, they could overlay that matrix on the default rotation. If necessary, they'd make some tweaks to ensure that each team gets a reasonably similar in-conference strength of schedule slate.  Michigan & Ohio State would always play each other, but in most years, that'd ensure that they're less likely to land Penn State, MSU, Wisconsin, etc.


B)  I suppose any  good team who got stuck with a brutal in-conference schedule (i.e., Michigan's 3 omitted teams are Rutgers, Maryland, and Illinois) would always still have a crack at the alternative playoff slots that don't get the benefit of a bye week. So, all that'd probably on the line in these situations would be whether or not they get the bye week.

Joined: 11/06/2013

MGoPoints: 8924

aoserc

November 5th, 2019 at 2:55 PM ^

That's my read of the picture as well. Think of it as just a 16 team tournament where the first round has 5 byes (and thus 5 fewer teams). With the added complication that the second round is re-seeded based on rank.

Odd that the article says 15 games, when this results in 10 games (3 dec-1 games, and then a 8 team tournament).

But then the quote "Nobody would play 16 games" doesn't make any sense, unless he assumes the winners of the first-round dec 1 games won't make the championship.

Joined: 09/04/2019

MGoPoints: 51

Alton

November 5th, 2019 at 2:25 PM ^

So I just looked at the Michigan Daily article about the game, and then I looked through the whole paper for that day.

Not a word, as far as I could tell.  Does that mean that this sort of thing was a regular occurrence?  Or not newsworthy?  Or so inexplicable that there was just nothing else to be said about it?  I guess it will be a mystery.

I did learn that there was a big battle going on in some city called Stalingrad, and that patriotic Michiganians were being asked to not drive faster than 35mph, and there were so many pleas to buy war bonds.  I also learned that the Michigan Daily writers weren't nearly concerned enough about Michigan's upcoming game against Iowa Pre-Flight.  But nothing about that weirdness at halftime.

Joined: 07/05/2008

MGoPoints: 13273

Champeen

November 5th, 2019 at 2:10 PM ^

That half time show fight looks exactly like the kind of fight the people on this message board would be involved in.  Throw 90% of you grammar nazi/bash posters content, tough guy behind a keyboard onto the field, and voila - that is an exact replica of what i would imagine.  

Joined: 04/07/2011

MGoPoints: 14799

Karbaugh

November 5th, 2019 at 2:14 PM ^

So correct me if I’m wrong, but wasn’t Deadspin purchased because the Gawker-Hulk Hogan lawsuit bankrupted the parent company? With that being the backdrop, the private equity firm would be coming in, buying the company at rock bottom prices, and trying to get it moving in a profitable direction so they can sell it for a nice profit.

I don’t understand the narrative that the new owners were trying to run it into the ground as that is the opposite of what a PE firm tries to do. They were trying to get the divisive content out of the site to be more appealing to larger masses. I am one of the potential readers that didn’t visit the site because of all the political stuff

Joined: 01/17/2017

MGoPoints: 94

wile_e8

November 5th, 2019 at 2:27 PM ^

You're right that the G/O acquisition was the fallout of the Gawker/Hulk Hogan lawsuit, but outside of that Deadspin was already profitable. The problem is that it would be more profitable (for the P/E company) to replace interesting writing from well-paid writers with generic ad-laden crap from cheap contractors. Not very profitable for the writers will be out of a job though. So rather than go along with a plan that would put them out of a job anyway so the P/E firm could make a quick(er) buck the writers blew it up. 

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 7381

JeepinBen

November 5th, 2019 at 2:30 PM ^

So, Deadspin in its most recent version was profitable. It just wasn't profitable enough for the PE people. Same as the Toys-R-Us bankruptcy. Toys-R-Us was profitable. It's just the PE firm could make more money by declaring bankruptcy, firing everyone, and liquidating.

The Deadspin thing seems much more like a personal grudge from the CEO. Deadspin had millions of unique readers and made money.

Joined: 01/22/2010

MGoPoints: 32222

AnthonyThomas

November 5th, 2019 at 2:55 PM ^

The "political stuff" was the reason for Deadspin's profitability. 

How would Deadspin be competitive doing the same thing that numerous larger sports websites already excel in? If the new owners' thinking was, "We can be just like ESPN," then they still ultimately made the decision to run the site into the ground, even if they didn't mean to. 

Joined: 11/13/2010

MGoPoints: 19383

Karbaugh

November 5th, 2019 at 3:53 PM ^

Could just be a difference of opinion between you and I, but that’s fine. Having actual commentary on what is happening in sports, similar to the site we are on right now is different than ESPN, and to me that is appealing. What is not, again this is for me, is the political stuff that is put in there. It is one of the same reasons I have a hard time following some of the mgoblog peeps on twitter cuz that tends to come out a lot. Politics in America are incredibly divisive in 2019 so I like having sports as an escape from that. It’s frustrating when it is brought up from sources that I don’t seek out for that type of commentary. Again, that’s just my opinion, but I have a feeling there are a lot more that feel similar

Joined: 01/17/2017

MGoPoints: 94

wile_e8

November 5th, 2019 at 4:32 PM ^

Hey, maybe it's possible that not everyone likes the exact same things you do. There's already a gajillion sites out there for people that want just commentary on what is happening in sports (like this one), but the traffic numbers at Deadspin showed that there was another audience that was interested sports as a crossroads with culture and politics. So it's great that you want to use sports as an escape, but no one was forcing you to go to Deadspin. But other people who liked different things than you do have one less outlet to visit because some P/E shitheads were find destroying a profitable website and putting a lot of people out of a job because they could make more money quicker that way. 

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 7381

Karbaugh

November 5th, 2019 at 5:02 PM ^

I understand no one forces me to go there and that is why I really haven’t much, I was just expressing a different view point. To be fair though, the site is dead because the writers or former head of Deadspin decided to use the nuclear option rather than keeping their well paying job because they think that inevitably they will lose it by getting replaced by lower paid writers(even if correct). I think also, the “private equity” term shades the conversation as well. If a single buyer came in and wanted to make changes that they thought would be best for the site and the writers disagreed I have a feeling there would be less vitriol around this situation 

Joined: 01/17/2017

MGoPoints: 94

wile_e8

November 5th, 2019 at 5:21 PM ^

Did you read the article Brian linked at the start of the Deadspin section? You're right that there would be a lot less vitriol if this was done by a single individual because that would be a one-off thing. The problem with private equity is that they've done this sort of thing at a lot of of media sites (and other businesses, see Toys 'R Us), and usually everyone is worse off except the P/E firm that makes a bunch of money in the process. So of course there's going to be vitriol when they do it again and one more worthwhile site disappears and plenty of interesting writers are out of a job. 

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 7381

AnthonyThomas

November 6th, 2019 at 2:59 AM ^

It's not difficult to find sports commentary that is free of partisan content. ESPN and every major network sports site offers that. There was no reason for Deadspin to pivot to that or anything approaching it.

The fact that the US is so politically divided is unfortunate, but there are reasons for it. Look no further than members of Barstool Sports openly celebrating Deadspin's demise. MGoBlog will become a rarer and rarer commodity with every new venture capitalist that enters the fray.

Joined: 11/13/2010

MGoPoints: 19383

Fitz

November 5th, 2019 at 3:15 PM ^

It went to Univision in the Gawker fallout and then was sold again this year. The only way you can appeal to everyone is writing bland non-opinionated stuff. Maybe you turn off a large group of people but you make a product that the remaining people are far more engaged with.

Joined: 11/13/2010

MGoPoints: 1161

bronxblue

November 5th, 2019 at 4:03 PM ^

I mean, if the goal is to make the most money in the least amount of time then "writing cheap shit that gets people to still click on articles a couple of times while the name still has some cache", then sure, congrats to them.  Sports Illustrated is now pretty much useless garbage but I'm sure someone will look at their bottom line and think it's a "brand" with some value.  Hell, over 2 million people were paying for AOL dial-up in 2015, and my guess is a decent number of them were just unwilling to change out of habit/laziness.

But it's far more likely that instead of making themselves more appealing by removing the "divisive" content they'll just remove overall interest.  I'm sure they can goose the numbers a bit to show a slight uptick in profitability (what with them not paying anyone to edit their site anymore) for a month or two, and the traffic is unlikely to fall off a cliff even if engagement on the site does drop.  But in the end the internet will lose a place that had a dedicated collection of people who enjoyed original content (that you didn't have to read or agree with) and have it replaced with a shitty knock-off of those content farm articles you see at the bottom of every SBNation site with links to 75-page slideshows about pimples.  

But feel free to head over to Deadspin right now and read about how POTUS groped Kurt Suzuki or an "article" that literally was just a re-telling of an AP article about a Dutch sprinter who got busted for transporting illegal drugs and claimed she thought they were PEDs.  Lot of great, thought-provoking content there.

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 170851

Mongo

November 5th, 2019 at 2:37 PM ^

It seems like the limited shots to Collins was more a function of Gattis going back to practicing the zone read option stuff.  To me, if they were going "all-Harbaugh" with power play-action then we would naturally see more of the Collins deep ball out of that play-action. 

Personally, I was disappointed in the Maryland game because I was hoping to see continuation of the ND/PSU run game predominately in pin/pull, Down G, counters and traps ... with an expanded pass game to complement that run game.  Which for me that would have been way more play-action shots downfield to both Collins and DPJ.  To get the timing down, etc. 

Instead, they seemed to go back and spent too much game time trying to develop the zone blocking needed to support the read option scheme.  The limited shots downfield was a choice Gattis made in order have plays needed to coach-up the team's read option weaknesses.  I think he "capitulated" at ND because of the weather, but Maryland is really more indicative of the multiple looks he is trying to develop from a zone blocking base.  I am concerned that this OL just can't make it work and the real strength is their athleticism in the pulling power stuff.  And the OL has been pass protecting really well of late, so was hoping for more pass game development.   

We will see what the bye week "self-scout" sessions determine by what offense they roll out against MSU.

Joined: 06/25/2016

MGoPoints: 9585

Reggie Dunlop

November 5th, 2019 at 2:56 PM ^

Wait, where's the giant section incessantly whining about paying players? You mean I actually have to read all of these now? 

RIP in peace, Deadspin. 

Joined: 10/24/2018

MGoPoints: 4389

LKLIII

November 5th, 2019 at 3:11 PM ^

RE: Juwan Howard not being a superstar, but being a "professional"---

 

I think it was one of our MGoBlog writers that might have made the analogy, but I thought was apt:

Juwan Howard is the basketball equivalent of Kevin Bacon. 

He's no threat to win an Academy Award. He'll never be the lead star in the summer blockbuster movie. But he's a pretty solid actor, is a consummate professional, and is known & genuinely well-liked by EVERYBODY.

Joined: 11/06/2013

MGoPoints: 8924

caup

November 5th, 2019 at 3:12 PM ^

I used to be a proponent of a small playoff.  I liked that a small playoff puts much more importance on every regular season game.

HOWEVA, I am now in favor of a larger playoff due to HORRIBLE officiating. I am damn sick and tired of a team's whole season being ruined by a road-game hatchet job by incompetent refs.

A larger playoff reduces the likelihood of one horrendously called game destroying an entire season.  Phantom OPI, no DPI, JT was short, GTFO!  Increase the margin for error.

Also, I'm tired of seeing our NFL-bound guys skip meaningless bowl games.  Give me a road playoff game with all hands on deck over a neutral-site exhibition game EVERY SINGLE TIME.

Joined: 06/30/2008

MGoPoints: 4275

bronxblue

November 5th, 2019 at 4:07 PM ^

A big component of an expanded playoffs would hinge on re-working the ranking system to move away from the human component.  We have good analytics at this point, and I don't want a world where a team that has a big following can sneak in at #15/16 or a G5 team doesn't because nobody gives them enough credit.  

Joined: 11/22/2008

MGoPoints: 170851